Harvey Milk - Life...The Best Game In Town

After releasing several albums in the 90s, Harvey Milk are celebrating their own renaissance by lauding the virtues of "Life...The Best Game In Town". Spearheaded by the alternately burly and angelic vocal stylings of Milk mastermind Creston Spiers, "Life" is both tumultuous and grueling, resonating with the glorious slow-motion radiance of Total Dirge Power. They've since been joined by Thrones legend Joe Preston.

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The Devil and The Sea - Heart vs. Spine

Heart vs. Spine is a triumph of a debut record from start to finish. Everything about this release just punishes the senses with thick, memorable songwriting nailing it all together. TDATS are a tight unit in every aspect musically, with an ability to go from lean violent attacks to expansive, lengthier dirges without losing a bit of their edge and ferocity. I think this is a band that everyone is going to be hearing a lot more about in the near future. They’ve got all the chops needed to set the underground circuit on fire. Imagine a cross of Cavity, 16, Unsane, akimbo with just a slight pinch of early Mastodon and you’ll have an approximate mental portrait of the kind of damage this act dishes out. Heart vs. Spine is highly recommended on all counts.

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Naked City - Torture Garden

I don't know much about this band. In fact Ive only recently even heard of them. I heard the track "bonehead" on the movie funny games recently and it was by far the most well placed music in a film score Ive ever seen/heard. Naked City is a jazz, noise, grind, death metal, avant-garde, punk, etc.... band with many notable musicians John Zorn being one of them. Its hard to even begin to describe this album. Imagine as the sun sets/early daughters chucked into a blender with fantomas and you'd be close. its the kinda thing you think is going on in someones head when they are doing something truly fucking disturbing.

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Black Elk s/t

The eponymous debut from Portland, Oregon's Black Elk is a raging, frothing-at-the-mouth eruption of damaged yet majestic destructo rock, seriously heavy and seriously catchy. A creeped out conglom of carnivorous charred hardcore punk, the sludgy power of primo Pacific Northwest tarpit rawk (think Karp, Melvins, and early Soundgarden as reference points), twitchy Midwestern noise rage somewhere between Am Rep circa-1991 and a more rabid Die Kreuzen, and a goatheaded psychedelic backwoods black mass/dance party risen to a fever pitch. Produced by Mike Lastra at Smegma Studios (Earth, Thrones, Jackie-O Motherfucker).

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Shellac - 1000 hurts

To the one true God above:here is my prayer -not the first you've heard, but the first I wrote.(not the first, but the others were a long time ago).There are two people here, and I want you to kill them.Her - she can go quietly, by disease or a blowto the base of her neck, where her necklaces close,where her garments come together,where I used to lay my face...That's where you oughta kill her,in that particular place.Him - just fucking kill him, I don't care if it hurts.Yes I do, I want it to,fucking kill him but firstmake him cry like a woman,(no particular woman),let him hold out hope that someone or other might comethen fucking kill him

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Jesus Lizaer - Liar

Arguably the greatest underground live band of the 1990s, the Jesus Lizard displayed all their virtues in perfect form on LIAR. The album blisters with a musical exactitude that can only come from within in a studio, but the lurching, slightly bluesy underpinnings of the tone make one feel as if they are present for the chaos. The Jesus Lizard had almost no chance of achieving stardom, but the laundry list of soon-to-be stars that borrowed wholesale from their sound (Kurt Cobain unabashedly among them) makes clear the sheer impact that LIAR, specifically, and the Jesus Lizard, in general, had on rock music in the 1990s.

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